Keith Hudson's Musings

Positive reasons for leaving the EU

Too often the reasons given by those who want to leave the EU are negative — the desire of getting out of the clutches of the Brussels bureaucracy, etc. Instead, those in favour of Brexit ought to be putting forward positive reasons why independence could be so much better for us.

For example, one of them –if not the main one — is that we still continue to treat China so distantly, even patronisingly, when it is by far the largest future market in the world for advanced services such as in education, digital, neuroscience, equity law, environment and genetics in which we are well poised.

Germany is still doing well by means of exporting advanced engineering and machine tools to China but these physical goods will be copied and Germany is by no means as well placed as we are in services. China is large and varied enough to become almost a world market in itself for at least the next 50 to 100 years — as it was before about 1750 — before it releases itself from Confucianism and catches up in innovative ability.